Deadline! Last days to enter the PA Modern Architecture Juried Photo Exhibit are here

June 2, 2015

Your best work will never appear on the walls of The State Museum of Pennsylvania if you don’t take the shot.

We’re now in the final days of when you can enter your best work in the PA Modern Architecture Juried Photo Exhibit. Bryan Van Sweden, a historic preservation specialist with the PHMC, offered his thoughts on Midcentury Modernarchitecture and where to find good examples. Here’s what he had to say:

First, there are types of buildings that are more likely to be good examples of Midcentury Modern: churches, schools, offices, apartment complexes, highway commercial properties and college campus buildings. Second, this was the time when zoning was becoming more common, so these uses are typically segregated from residential neighborhoods. In most cases, municipalities zoned for commercial, office and multi-family developments along important corridors or highways at the edge of cities and small towns. (The exceptions: churches and schools tend to be more scattered in early suburban neighborhoods.) For example, here in the Harrisburg area, there are some notable concentrations:

· Route 11/15 between Wormleysburg and I-81 (think of the American Legion Post or Barlups Appliances)

· Trindle Road

· Old Gettysburg Road in Lower Allen Township

· Carlisle Pike between the Camp Hill bypass and Route 581

In short, start thinking about historic development patterns. Where were young families living and shopping in the 1940s, ‘50’s, and ‘60’s? Where do you find all the ranch houses? Those are the areas that were being built up in the postwar period.